The National Institutes of Health (NIH) Therapeutics for Rare and Neglected Diseases (TRND) program is a congressionally funded effort to encourage and speed the development of new drugs for rare and neglected diseases. The federal budget for fiscal 2009 dedicated $24 million to establish this initiative. TRND will bridge the wide gap in time and resources that often exists between basic research and human testing of new drugs. The effort is grounded in, but aims to improve upon, existing processes for drug development in the pharmaceutical industry. What are TRND's goals? TRND will strive to develop candidate drugs for rare and neglected diseases that meet FDA requirements for an IND application, which is necessary for human testing. TRND expects to license most of its IND-worthy candidate drugs to biopharmaceutical companies for clinical development. In addition, TRND will seek to advance the entire field of drug development by encouraging scientific and technological innovations aimed at improving success rates in the crucial pre-clinical stage of development.